


more than the sum of our parts

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: BadBoy!Blaine, M/M, innocent!blaine, nerd!Kurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 04:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3195974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is sort of an apology because my multichapter isn't updating and i just really wanted to write badboy!blaine getting tutored by nerd!kurt. warnings for nongraphic descriptions of violence/wounds, a singular gay slur, and a slight innocence!kink because i am way too self-indulgent.<br/>title taken from a really, really irrelevant mary lambert song. i just liked the sum pun. sorry.<br/>(also they're both 16. cool)</p>
            </blockquote>





	more than the sum of our parts

_“Would Mr. Kurt Hummel please come to the guidance office? Mr. Kurt Hummel, please come to the guidance office. He will be returning.”_

Kurt puts his pencil down, heart hammering in his chest. He has no idea what this call could be about—he’s a model student, and the last two times it had been about his dad the call had been to the main office, not the guidance one. Also he didn’t return to class those days. So his dad is probably fine. Okay. He exhales a slow, steady breath, accepts the pass from his teacher, and heads down the hall, pushing his glasses up his nose with one hand—a nervous reflex. It’s a little weird, because he doesn’t think he’s ever been in the guidance office other than to discuss colleges with the counselor, Miss Pillsbury, and that had been after school and previously arranged. He immediately halts in front of the glass door when he sees Blaine Anderson sitting across from the counselor, the scowl ever-present on his face deeper than he’s ever seen it before.

Miss Pillsbury, unfortunately, sees him and rushes to open the door—as if that were his problem. “Kurt! Hello, please come in.”

Kurt takes the chair beside Blaine hesitantly. There’s probably smeared motorcycle oil some place on those dark jeans of his, and these are designer pants Kurt’s wearing—subtle khakis, because that’s what it takes to blend in at this school, but designer nonetheless.

“So you’re probably wondering why you’re here, Kurt,” Miss Pillsbury says cheerfully, breaking the awkward silence. “Well, good news! You’re going to be tutoring Blaine!”

If there had been a drink in his mouth, Kurt would have spat it out. As it is, he chokes on his own spit. “Excuse me?”

“You mentioned wanting more extracurriculars after quitting glee club in first quarter,” Miss Pillsbury goes on. She seems to have not noticed Kurt’s reaction. “Blaine here has been struggling with his schoolwork for quite awhile. It seemed like a win-win situation!”

Kurt’s eyebrows go to his hairline. Ah, yes, tutoring the one person who has adamantly refused to be controlled by any sort of authority the second he stepped into high school. Kurt’s dream.

Blaine is slouching further and further into the pristinely lacquered chair in which he’s seated. He hasn’t said a word throughout this whole interaction, and Kurt’s gaze slides involuntarily to him. He doesn’t want to stereotype Blaine, but ever since he’s first starting seeing him in the McKinley hallways, it’s difficult to imagine anything else besides this rough, darkened boy sitting next to him. But Kurt doesn’t want to pity him, either.

“Fine,” he says finally, turning to face Blaine a little more. “Do you want to meet in the library after school on Friday?”

Blaine snorts. “I have better things to do than this tutoring shit.”

“Well, you don’t have a choice!” Miss Pillsbury chirps. “I think you two will have a lot of fun getting to know each other.”

Blaine looks Kurt up and down, and Kurt feels himself shrink back into his seat without meaning to. “Oh, yeah, a lot of _fun_.” He smirks suggestively, eyeing Kurt slower this time. Kurt straightens his shoulders.

“If that’s all, Miss Pillsbury—”

“Yes, thank you, Kurt,” she says, smile in full force. “I’m sure it will be a great learning opportunity.”

Kurt gets up to go, Blaine following him a moment later. The door slams behind him and they walk their separate ways.

-

Every thought of Blaine is out of his head until Friday afternoon, when he comes to the library immediately after the bell rings. Kurt sits close to the entrance, hoping to spot Blaine soon after so they can just have the tutoring session and get it over with. When he doesn’t show up within the next thirty minutes, Kurt sighs and opens his own homework. He doesn’t even know what he’s tutoring Blaine in, so he can’t exactly set up any preparations. This was a horrible idea, he admits to himself about three problems into his math when he finds himself losing focus. He should’ve just put up with all the drama of glee club. He should’ve never, ever told Miss Pillsbury he was interested in more school-related things to do. He’s just had this last thought when the door bangs open and Blaine slouches into the room, sitting at a chair across the table from Kurt’s.

“Hey,” Kurt says, closing his textbook and sliding it to the side. “So what subject am I tutoring you in?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Blaine mutters, pulling out his phone and moving his thumbs lazily across the screen. “Just pretend like you’re teaching me shit and I’ll sit here for the next twenty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes,” Kurt corrects, and Blaine looks up at him with a wrinkled brow. “You’re staying here for thirty minutes—at least. And I’m not going to pretend to do anything. I expect you to pay full attention during your lesson and to give me honest answers. Now, what subject am I tutoring you in?”

There’s a pause during which Blaine squints at Kurt like he’s some puzzle waiting to be solved and Kurt holds his breath, arms folded over his chest, hoping this won’t lead to him getting jumped in the parking lot next week.

Blaine finally scoffs. “You’re bossy.”

“Get used to it,” Kurt says, holding back an eye-roll. “What subject am I tutoring you in?”

“You could at least not end sentences with prepositions,” Blaine says, returning his gaze to his phone.

“You technically just did that yourself. I guess I’m not tutoring you in English.”

Blaine makes a noise that could be interpreted as a laugh, which is to say that he’s not smiling but he sounds amused. “No. Math, actually. Algebra.”

Kurt bites back a comment he’d only regret (something along the lines of “ _Algebra_? We’re _juniors_ ”) and instead nods. “Alright. What unit are you on?”

They continue like this for the next twenty minutes—Kurt asks a question, Blaine pokes at his phone, Kurt rolls his eyes, Blaine responds—until he finally gets a good grasp on what Blaine is struggling with (simultaneous linear equations, factoring, graphing—to name a few).

“So next Friday I’ll bring my old math notebooks and you can take a look at them, as well as any online resources that I can dig up. Your homework until then is to go on khanacademy.org and wolframalpha.com and to look up the types of problems you’ve been having issues with. See if you can find anything of use to you, and print it out if you can and bring it on Friday. Okay?”

“It’s only the first day and you’re giving me homework?” Blaine complains, but backs off when he sees Kurt’s look. Kurt, for his part, is getting a very quick handle on how to deal with Blaine—meeting his disgruntled demeanor with sarcasm and bitchy comments is apparently the way to go on this one. Who’d have thought?

“Yes, and I expect you to have it done. We’ll meet again next Friday, if this time and place is convenient for you.”

Blaine shrugs. “I guess.”

“Good.” Kurt begins packing his homework and calculator, not bothering to see if Blaine has left yet.

-

They continue the tutoring every week school is in session continuously until second quarter is almost at an end. In the first thirty minutes he spends alone in the library, Kurt usually manages to get his homework done before Blaine gets there. He actually thinks Blaine is making good progress. He hasn’t made anything over a C on his math tests since they started, but Kurt has confidence in him.

Two weeks into second quarter, Blaine is over an hour late for the first time. And then he’s an hour and a half late. And then two hours late. The school is starting to darken around the library, and it’s an hour till it closes completely. Kurt is—okay, he doesn’t want to do admit this, but he’s sort of worried about Blaine. The boy doesn’t exactly have the best track record, and Kurt wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gotten into some sort of trouble. So it’s normal to worry. Right?

Fifteen minutes before the school is set to close—Kurt had begged the librarian to let him stay just a bit longer—the door creaks open and Blaine emerges, dragging his feet even slower than usual.

Kurt doesn’t look up at the approaching footsteps, not wanting to seem concerned at all. But he finally can’t help himself when he sees Blaine’s shoes stopped right in front of their usual table and he’s not sitting down.

“Blaine? What—” he starts, and then stops when he sees the bruises on Blaine’s face. “Oh my god.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Blaine says, possibly the first time he’s ever apologized to Kurt. His breathing is ragged and his hands keep twitching at his sides. “I, uh, ran into some problems.”

“Literally?” Kurt surveys the damage: a black eye, a purple bruise on the opposite cheek, so big it went to his jawline, a thin cut over his nose, and blood dripping from his split upper lip. “Hey, listen. We don’t have to do the session today if you don’t want to. Why don’t you just—get those looked at or something.”

Blaine is still standing, a dark figure over the table. “I’m alright.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “Oh, of course, my bad. You _looking_ terrible doesn’t mean—”

“I’d really like it if we could still have the session,” Blaine blurts, eyes fixed on the ground. “I think I’m making progress. I don’t want to miss this tutoring over—”

“Blaine,” Kurt says, throwing a glance at the librarian, who has emphatically started packing up her things. He doesn’t want to call Blaine on his bullshit. It feels sort of mean, though Kurt doesn’t know why—it’s not as if Blaine’s ever showed any interest in the tutoring sessions before. But he has a feeling Blaine is trying to escape something, a feeling he’s known all too well in his life. “Do you want to have it at my house? My stepmother is a nurse, so she can look at your bruises and stuff.”

“Sure,” Blaine says, relaxing visibly.

They don’t speak the whole car ride there.

-

“Hi Kurt, I was getting worried about y—oh my goodness,” Carole says, greeting them at the door and taking in sight of Blaine’s marred face. “Who is this?”

“This is Blaine. I’ve been tutoring him the past couple of months,” Kurt explains, pushing his glasses up his nose unconsciously. “He, uh, I don’t know what happened. Could you take a look at his face and see if you have anything for him?”

Carole ushers them in, a concerned look on her face. “Of course. Just sit right here and I’ll get some stuff. Be back in a minute!” she calls as she disappears down the hallway.

Blaine claims the couch, so Kurt sits tensely in the armchair. Finn ambles his way past and catches sight of Blaine.

“Hey, Kurt, what’s he doing here? What happened to his face?”

“Carole’s taking a look at him once she gets her first aid supplies,” Kurt explains. “Finn, this is Blaine. Blaine, this is Finn, my younger stepbrother.”

“I’m not younger!” Finn protests.

“Yes, you are. My birthday is months before yours.”

“But I’m taller by like, a foot,” Finn says to Blaine, nodding before walking into the kitchen. “Kurt, am I allowed to have the pistachio cookies you made?”

“Absolutely not. You haven’t had dinner.”

“I’ve had a whole sleeve of oreos!”

“No, Finn. Warm up the leftover chicken instead.”

“Fine.”

Kurt turns back to Blaine, who looks like he’s smothering a laugh.

“I told you you were bossy when we first met,” he says, surprising Kurt with the memory. “I was so right.”

Before Kurt can react, Carole comes back in with her kit and two ice packs.

“I’m going to put iodine on your cut,” she says, sitting on the couch next to Blaine. “This will sting. Hold still.”

Blaine tenses before she dabs the iodine onto his cheek, hissing out his front teeth in pain as she does so.

“There,” Carole says, removing the tincture from his face and wiping it on a tissue before returning it to the kit. “Now keep these ice packs on your bruises for the next hour. What’s your home phone number? I want to call your parents.”

Blaine shakes his head, accepting the ice packs. “They’re not at home. They’re in Columbus for the week.”

Carole frowns. “There’s no way I can reach them?”

Blaine’s eyes drop to the floor. “No. They wouldn’t care, anyway.”

Carole’s frown deepens, but she only says, “Which do you prefer, chicken or salmon? I’ve got both here and you need sustenance.”

Blaine shrugs. “I guess chicken. If Finn hasn’t eaten it all.”

Carole gets up and heads toward the kitchen. Right before she goes in, she says, “Oh! And try to not talk or move your mouth too much. Your lip is just starting to scab.”

Blaine’s mouth twitches. “You’re like her,” he says under his breath, eyes sliding over to Kurt. “Both bossy.”

“You’re not supposed to be talking,” Kurt says. The next ten minutes of silence are awkward—Kurt wants to go to his room and listen to music, but he doesn’t think it’s good manners to leave Blaine—technically his guest—alone in his living room. Even if he’s been tutoring the boy for a few months, it doesn’t mean they’re friends or anything. But he can’t even make conversation. Well, Blaine’s lip doesn’t look so bad now that it’s healing up. (Kurt forces his eyes away from Blaine’s mouth before he can stare at those full, pink lips for too long.) He’s bored, and talking is something to do.

“Who beat you up?”

Blaine raises his eyebrows. “What happened to ‘you’re not supposed to be talking’?”

Kurt shrugs. “There’s nothing else to do, is there? What’s stopping you from telling me?”

“Whatever,” Blaine says, eyes downcast again. “I didn’t get _beat up_. I got punched in the face a few times, but as soon as I saw the knife I was out of there.”

“That’s what happened to your nose?” Kurt asks, but Blaine has readjusted the ice packs over his face and doesn’t answer.

There’s a minute or two of the awkward quiet again.

“Is it someone I know?”

“What?”

“Is it someone I know, who punched you or hurt you or whatever? Someone at McKinley?”

Blaine’s lips narrow. “Yeah.”

“Those Neanderthals,” Kurt says, words bitter on his tongue. “Azimio and—”

“Karofsky and their gang, yeah,” Blaine finishes, eyes still turned away. “They don’t like me being so—” He stops, and Kurt can tell he won’t finish the sentence.

“You got beat up for hanging out with me.” It’s not a question, and Blaine winces. “We can stop the tutoring if you want. You’re getting the concepts fine, the two websites you have written down are useful without a—”

“But I _want_ to continue the tutoring!” Blaine says, voice very loud in the small quiet space of the living room. He blushes—an honest-to-god blush, which Kurt would never have thought he’d see on Blaine Anderson’s dirt streaked face under motorcycle-helmet-wild hair, and it is actually—very cute, which Kurt immediately does not think about at all whatsoever. “I mean—it’s. It’s nice, I guess.”

Kurt stares at him guardedly until Blaine sighs and meets his eyes.

“You don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” he says, fingers tightening around the ice packs in his hands. “All the teachers—they think, because of how I dress and what I do—because of this stupid defense mechanism I’m wearing—they think I automatically don’t want to learn. Except Mrs. Jenell, but, I mean, look at my English grade. It’s a solid A. She doesn’t treat me like I’m five years old. Neither do you.”

Kurt feels heat rising in his cheeks, but Carole comes in just as he’s about to speak.

“Hey, boys, Finn ate the rest of the chicken so I had to make the salmon. Will you sit down and eat, both of you?”

Kurt gets up and looks at Blaine expectantly. He nods and gingerly sets the ice packs onto the couch.

-

They eat in relative silence, the corn and salmon and salad somewhat flavorless on Kurt’s tongue. It is all very good, but he just can’t seem to stop—looking, at Blaine, who wipes his mouth with his napkin every other bite and gnaws his lower lip more than he gnaws his corn and has really strangely long eyelashes. He hates that anyone would hurt this boy because of who he’s hanging out with—he hates it even more that Blaine got beat up because of _tutoring_ , for god’s sake. Kurt knows that Azimio and Karofsky and the rest of the jocks automatically target anyone Kurt hangs out with—hence Kurt’s ever lowering number of friends—but he didn’t think that any interaction as simple as teaching after school on Fridays would affect his student.

Clearly, it has.

Blaine clears his plate when Kurt is still pushing around the remains of his salad. Once he’s looked up from eating Blaine’s gaze goes immediately to Kurt, who lowers his own and pretends like he wasn’t staring, feeling red start to rise hot in his ears.

“Can I wash my plate?” he says to Carole, who shakes her head.

“Oh, no, sweetie, thank you. Just put your plate and things in the sink and I’ll do it.”

“Where’s Dad?” Kurt says. He is a little ashamed that he hadn’t thought to ask till now—normally if his dad is late it’s the first thing he notices. Then again, his mind has been a bit preoccupied this evening.

“He’s working the late shift at the garage,” Carole responds. “One of the guys who usually does it is out sick with something.”

“Can I have the pistachio cookies now?” Finn asks, joining Blaine to put his plate in the sink.

“Cookie, singular,” Kurt says. “Yes, you may.”

Finn pouts, but goes to open the tin where it’s sitting next to the refrigerator. “Hey, Blaine, you want one? Kurt made them yesterday so they’re still pretty fresh. Unless you’re allergic to pistachio?”

“I’m not allergic,” Blaine says. He sounds surprised as he takes a cookie from the tin. “Thank you. For—all of this,” he adds, turning to Carole and Kurt. “You didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t want you getting beat up worse on your way home,” Kurt says. “You said they had a knife.” Carole winces.

“You did the right thing, Kurt,” she says. “Blaine, do you want me to drive you to your house now? You can’t live too far away if you both—”

Blaine shrugs, turning the cookie over in his hands as he and Finn sit back down at the table. “If it makes it easier for you. I’m sure you don’t want me to spend the night.”

“Kurt wouldn’t mind,” Finn announces, chomping his cookie in two.

“Finn!” Kurt says, scolding but not exactly sure why. Blaine, wonder of wonders, gives him a smile at that.

It’s possibly the first time Kurt’s ever seen him really, really smile.

The first word that he can think of is _adorable_ , and the second word he thinks is _no_. Even if Blaine is gay—with those skintight leather pants and the smeared eyeliner he’s wearing, Kurt isn’t willing to rule out that option just yet—he’d never want someone like Kurt. Hell, he got beat up for being _tutored_ by Kurt. If that turned into more, there is no reason the jocks would see not to kill.

Kurt shivers. He realize Blaine is still holding his eye contact and breaks it abruptly, missing the way Blaine’s smile instantly falls when Kurt isn’t looking at him.

“If you think it’s better,” Carole says hesitantly, looking between the boys with a strange eye, “I heard you talking about how you didn’t want to miss the tutoring session today, Blaine—will there be anyone worried if we don’t get you home by a certain time? A sibling or anyone? If you want you’re more than welcome to have the tutoring session in here—Kurt’s room is fine as long as the door stays open.”

Kurt is about to respond, but Blaine speaks first. “Oh—yeah, actually, that’d be great. And no, there’s no one at home to miss me.” He grins, but it’s nothing like his previous smile. In spite of all those teeth, it looks a little sad, a little fake. Kurt has worn that same grin many a time. “My brother’s out of college and away, and like I said my parents are out of town.”

“Well,” Kurt says, clearing his dishes and Carole’s from the table. “I’ll lead you to my room, then.”

-

Blaine follows Kurt up to his room without really knowing what to expect. The whitewashed walls and the neat bulletin board and overflowing bookshelf—well, Blaine doesn’t know if that’s how all bedrooms look or just Kurt’s. In spite of his reputation, Blaine has never had enough friends to know the typical teenage room. Puck lives in his parents’ garage, so that doesn’t count. And he’s never been over to anyone’s house before. The etiquette his parents had instilled in him from a very young age has kicked in, and that’s all he’s going by right now. Still, he heads for the bed before thinking better of it and sitting on the small woven rug in the center of the room.

“This good?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, pulling a few thick textbooks out of his bookshelf as well as two pads of paper and three pencils. It should probably be more awkward, having a really cute boy in his bedroom—of all places—for a _tutoring_ session, but it’s not. Kurt sits next to Blaine on the rug—relatively close next to Blaine, but that’s just because the rug is small—and hands him a pad of paper.

“I’m guessing you didn’t bring your homework from last time.”

“No,” Blaine says, one corner of his mouth twitching up. “They took my backpack. Not my phone or earbuds, but I think everything else is gone. All my notes and stuff.”

“They probably just threw it in the dumpster,” Kurt muses. “If you want, on Monday, I can help you get it back. They’ve thrown my stuff in there a lot and the inside of that thing is more clean than you’d expect. Not pristine and orderly, of course, but not nearly as smelly as the jocks think.”

Blaine raises an eyebrow. “I can get my stuff out on my own.”

Kurt feels his face flush and busies himself opening a textbook. “Yes, but you wouldn’t have known it was in the dumpster.”

When his blush has gone down a bit, he chances a glance at Blaine, who is staring at him with an amused little smile twisting his mouth. “What?”

“I just like you a lot, that’s all,” Blaine mutters, dropping his eyes and smile at the same time and grabbing a pencil from Kurt’s hand. “Hey, are we gonna do more factoring with the, uh, multinomials today? Because I had a quiz on that yesterday and I didn’t understand anything.”

“Polynomials,” Kurt corrects. His face keeps wanting to smile and he wills it away. “I thought you were fine on factoring.”

“Yeah, when the first variable doesn’t have a coefficient,” Blaine says, crossing his legs in those painted-on leather pants and pursing his lips. “That’s what they’re called, right?”

“Yes, you’re right,” Kurt says. “Um—Blaine?” He’s watching Kurt again, with something dancing light through his eyes and this strange crooked smile on his face. Kurt doesn’t know how to tell him that it makes him feel really weird and really comfortable at the exact same time.

“Yeah?”

“So on the quizzes,” Kurt says, flipping a few pages back in the textbook to where he knows there’s stuff on polynomials and simplification and factoring, “he wasn’t throwing any shit at you where he used x4 instead of x2 yet, was he?”

“No,” Blaine says. “I can’t wait for when he does, though. I’m sure it’ll all make sense once you explain it to me.”

Kurt pushes his glasses up his nose. “Um, actually, I was thinking of discontinuing the tutoring sessions after today.”

“What?” Blaine’s face instantly changes to the scowl that Kurt’s so used to seeing on him at school, and Kurt feels like someone stuck a knife in his stomach.

“Um, I don’t want you to get hurt because you’re—you know—hanging out with the fag.” He laughs bitterly.

“Okay, first please never say that word ever again,” Blaine says. His face has gone quiet and withdrawn. He looks—scared. Another expression Kurt had never thought he’d see on Blaine Anderson’s face.

“Sorry,” he says, but Blaine doesn’t seem to hear him.

“But second—why on earth would I stop the tutoring? These sessions are useful to me. You—they mean something, they’re helping. I’ve ran from them before, but I won’t run from them again.”

“You—” Kurt is trying to make sense of all this strangeness. “You ran from them tonight, didn’t you?”

“That’s different.” Blaine rubs a hand over his face, exhales. “I’ll run when I’m in danger of being hurt, not when those morons think I deserve to be hurt for doing nothing wrong. We’re doing nothing wrong, Kurt,” he says, meeting Kurt’s eyes with his own amber ones. “It’s not even like we’re together, really. But the reason they left me alone before is because of all this.” He gestures to his outfit. “When I’m with Puck, when we’re like this, I’m safe from them. But I don’t want to—run, or hide, anymore. Just because they think I’m doing something wrong just by existing.”

Kurt really means to say something intelligent or meaningful to combat this huge amount of anger that’s pouring out of Blaine, he really does. But all he can really think of to say is—“You’re gay?”

Blaine snorts, scratching his arm with his hand absently. “Well, duh. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to do all this shit. But I’m—I’m so fucking sick of it. Of everyone thinking that I’m dangerous or whatever—it kept them away for awhile, didn’t it? But that’s no good anymore. They know I’m weak now—they’ve seen me run away now. There’s no point in any of this.”

Kurt takes Blaine’s hand from where it’s started scratching at his arm feverishly. He doesn’t mean to, he just doesn’t understand—Blaine is full of so much hurt, and he’s only going to hurt himself more if he hangs out with Kurt. He tells the latter part of that to Blaine, who squeezes where their fingers are tangled together.

“But I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m tired of doing what they think is right to protect myself. I want to do what I like, and if that doesn’t meet their standards, then fine, they’ll come after me with a knife again. I’ll be fine. I can at least defend myself better now that I know their weapons. I can come prepared, too.” His voice hardens.

“You can’t just do that, though,” Kurt says, using his unoccupied hand to adjust his glasses on his nose. “You’ll get hurt. There’s two of us and ten of them.”

“I don’t care,” Blaine says. He stares at where their hands are joined on the rug between them, and Kurt fights the urge to pull away. “They can’t stop me from doing anything.”

“Blaine, they could _kill you_.” Honestly—why doesn’t this boy _understand_? “I can’t let you get killed for this.”

Blaine finds Kurt’s eyes again. Kurt can feel his heartbeat so fast in the palm of his hand. Blaine looks at him like he’s searching for something, and Kurt stares back—he doesn’t know what Blaine wants from him anymore. He just can’t let this happen.

And then Blaine smiles—that breathtaking smile that Kurt will never get used to as long as he sees it, honestly, the way his eyes and nose smile with his mouth like his whole body needs to help show how happy he is, not just his lips—his lips that are on Kurt’s, gasping as Kurt’s hand instinctively comes up to grasp Blaine’s jaw and pull them closer than close. Their noses bump and Kurt turns his head sideways without breaking the kiss—because that’s what this is, oh god, he is _kissing Blaine Anderson_.

Kurt’s other hand lets go of Blaine’s and blindly grabs at his waist to pull their whole bodies together instead of just their faces. Blaine’s hands are on his shoulderblades, and it’s awkward because they’re both still sitting but Kurt is also halfway to having Blaine in his lap, and—

Kurt pulls back, panting for air, and Blaine chases his lips before pulling back too and knocking their foreheads together gently.

“You _like_ me,” he breathes, eyes full of happiness and hands still on Kurt’s shoulders. “Oh my _god_.”

Kurt laughs. “Of course I do, you idiot. After you look past your bad eyeliner and motor-oily clothes, you’re sort of irresistible.”

Blaine’s eyes go wider than his smile. “Say that again.”

“You idiot.”

“You know what I mean!” He slides his hands down Kurt’s shoulders and squeezes his biceps. “Also holy shit, you are muscular under all those clothes.”

Kurt blushes. “Maybe it’s the heavy backpack?”

“I can’t believe I waited so long to do that,” Blaine says, eyes dancing again. “I thought you didn’t like me like—that.”

“I didn’t even know you were gay,” Kurt says. “I mean, if you wore those leather pants everyday then maybe I would’ve considered it more, but—”

“You should kiss me again,” Blaine says, then ducks his head and turns red. “I mean, if you want. You can’t deny that that first one was pretty spectacular.”

“Spectacular, huh?” Kurt grins. One hand is still on Blaine’s face. The other is still on Blaine’s hip. It’s so easy to just crush their bodies together and—

“Mmmpf,” Blaine says as Kurt licks his way into Blaine’s mouth. “Oh wow, you are really, really good at that.” Kurt pulls away to suck a tiny line of kisses into Blaine’s jaw, which is wonderfully responsive and earns him a series of high-pitched moans. “Okay, okay, I said you were good, oh my god,” Blaine laughs as Kurt pulls off and smirks at him. “No way this is your first time doing that.”

“I worked at a music store sophomore year,” Kurt offers. They’re both grinning at each other like _idiots_ , he doesn’t know why he feels like he owes Blaine a thing, but he wants to tell him at least this. “There was this guy—and he was cute, and we flirted and went on one date and made out a bit, but that was all. What, you’ve never done this before?” He fixes Blaine with a curious eye. Blaine blushes.

“Uh, my reputation precedes me? But no, that was my first—anything, I guess.” He’s turning redder with every word. Kurt draws a thumb over his cheekbone—it is honestly turning him on way more than he thought it would, to be someone’s first. With Chandler they were each other’s first kiss, but this is—wow. He’d never thought that Blaine hadn’t done _anything_.

“Wait,” Kurt says, a thought occurring to him. “You didn’t—pretend to be dumb, or anything, just so I would tutor you?”

Blaine laughs. “What? No, I didn’t even know I’d get lucky and have the super hot nerd tutor me instead of one of the awkward seniors who consider the juniors ‘kids’—”

“You just got lucky, then?” Kurt says, tracing a line down Blaine’s neck with a fingertip. It makes both of them shiver.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, breath hitching when Kurt drags his finger over the jut of Blaine’s collarbone. “God, if you keep doing that—”

“Good thing we’ve got all night then, hmm?”

Kurt’s never seen anyone’s eyes sparkle as bright as Blaine’s.

-

When he wakes up Blaine is gone from the guest room where Carole had insisted he stay the night. But there’s a note on the dresser written in the surprisingly neat lettering that Kurt has come to know as Blaine’s handwriting.

 

_Kurt—_

_I know that you don’t want to give the jocks any more reasons to hurt us, but we’ve only got this year and senior year left before who knows where we’ll go. And I’d really like to spend the rest of my time here with you—if you want._

_So I was thinking, there’s this restaurant in Ohio that my parents took me to once and it’s pretty good—better than anything in Lima, anyway. I know you’ve usually got something going on Fridays right after school, but do you think you could make an exception just this once? I can drive._

_—Blaine_

 

That’s an invitation Kurt just can’t refuse.

 


End file.
